Then it has merit?
I see it as an enhancement to existing pages. Not all, but those who would likely pass a peer rating and are formatted nicely.
Honestly I don't know, and I don't know enough about the ebook process, effect on revenue potential and any likely marketing boost to be sure. Perhaps on the basis of an e'book' that is actually just one article each time (or just for actual books), giving each author the option to have readers download that article. But personal opinion is that it's likely to appeal as much to those of lowest quality work as to those of highest. It's open source so I don't see how you'd prevent any articles following that route once the gate is open. One advantage with devtome remaining the sole repository and work in progress is the breadth and depth of appeal, even if that's just to join in writing. That means any general appraisal has to ecompass the whole as well as any individual submission. Breaking it up into individual articles or authors makes that appraisal and risk quite different.
I think the biggest problem is that the idea is most likely to appeal to those who are most proactive with the better articles, and then those who (arguably) overrate their work. If that's true then epublishing works could amount to the effective reduction of hits for those articles that otherwise might drive the most traffic, and marketing those articles that might be best suited to waiting for better proofreading and edits before publishing.
Fin brought the book idea up a while ago and I said something along the lines that just because something can be done doesn't mean it should be done. I tend to still belive that. I'm not sure how duplicating content aside from say focusing on a particular area for a particular audience (eg. e-currency blog or novels if somebody is able to offer real editorial/review skills) helps at this point, but happy to be proven wrong. To me it all comes back to the same point again and again. We cannot presume people will buy dvc under the same motivation as others will earn them, but for earnings and devcoin to remain meaningful buyers are also needed. Devtome offers a means to catalyse revenue and interest for devcoin without necessarily buying devcoin in the usual way being the only way.
* I understood the point of devtome and the % of share allocation to date, as building a model with revenue to invest into supporting DVC value, as well as the wiki itself, and so helping to enable everything else to come. That means pageviews and revenue, the commercial element, are fundamental to success, so I'm not sure changing that dynamic would help.
